Too funny @Cranky ! We planted both raspberry and blackberry canes this year. The deer browsed them down, but they are still growing. I’m hopeful for next year!
@AllHat , thanks for the information. Here the food pantries are stretched to their limits and beyond. We could afford fruit, but it is the sudden large increase that is bothering me. I’m trying to keep to $500 CAD per month for food. I managed that last month, but most months I’m over $600-700 now. I might have to talk to hubby about an increase in the grocery budget. Our grocery budget makes up 17% - 20% of our take home pay (some is taxed before we get it, other not until tax time next year).
@LadyDuck , I’m ahead of you there! . We have about a dozen pints of unsweetened applesauce I canned earlier this fall in my canning cupboard. It just doesn’t seem like a lot. I should have canned more. I keep waiting for fruit sales at the grocery store, and they never materialize.
<3 I’m glad you saw it from a place of love, as intended. I hope your husband agrees to raise the budget a bit! I think everyone is spending a lot more than we used to.
A quick calculation shows we should expect to have a 5-7% increase so far this year. Our grocery budget for just two seniors should be around $700 CAD per month. That’s outrageous!
Honestly, I don’t buy a lot of fruit in the winter - apples, bananas, those little cutie oranges. It’s not really in season and we eat lots of vegetables.
I froze strawberries when we picked them, and applesauce. Once the raspberries are really producing I’ll freeze a lot of those. But otherwise, it’s kale & carrots for the duration!
I’d fence the raspberries if you’ve got deer. We’ve got ours blocked off from the darned chickens. (Who are mounting and not laying and thus totally useless right now!)
Just got back from my morning walk and my walking buddy laughed at the 5-7% figure. She claimed that’s Canada as a whole. Regionally, our grocery prices have risen 20-25%!!!
It’s the same here. I saw a few different YouTubers do item by item comparisons on things (like recreating past shopping trips) and despite what is being reported they found increases between like 20%-30%.
I barely ever buy fruit either these days except bananas and frozen berries at TJ’s where they are cheap - I can technically afford them but it turns my stomach to pay such obscene prices. And it’s been like that pretty much since we moved here, even with stuff that is in season. If something goes on sale, it is IMMEDIATELY gone by the evening of the day the sale flyers come out. Like, Winn-Dixie was completely denuded of all green and sweet bell peppers one time.
Can confirm. I miss my raspberry canes so much.
To answer the original question, I’m on a strict news diet these days so honestly did not know there was a new shortage that’s going to affect stuff, though it does not surprise me at all. We were thinking that around Thanksgiving, which is nearly the end of hurricane season, we’d dive into our hurricane food stash and start eating it down a bit. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not now. But, like, we can’t keep the stash forever, at some point even nonperishable stuff should get eaten.
And we are just not seeing any good sales here - like, the sale prices are maybe a little higher than what stuff should cost. And of course it’s always immediately cleaned out.
School picture package last year:
1 - 5x7 Portrait
2 - 3x5 Portraits
4 - 2x3 Wallets
8 - Small Wallets
No digital download
$28. I wasn’t wild about it but sure fine whatever. Although I did end up getting a duplicate set of everything above because I thought they did a retouch issue and the second set ended up looking identical to the first set, lol.
Same package this year: $38!!
The cheapest package is two 3x5 Portraits and four 2x3 Wallets for $23. Going a la carte I could get just the high rez download for $33 which is highway robbery but cheaper than the package I was looking at, then it depends on how much it would cost to get CVS or whoever to handle the actual printing (edit: CVS is cheap but after the $33 for the download package it’s a wash compared to buying the package ). More a la carte options - two 5x7s is $20 and then four 3x5s is $20.
B’s school pictures a few weeks ago had no package below $40. I ended up paying something like $75 for the digital copy of 3 out of the 4 poses. It was outrageous.
I finally made a meal plan and grocery list again - meals are sorted into b/l/d but I am eating 4-5 times a day. The higher inflation goes, the more the shopping list looks like what we ate as kids. @SisterX was asking on her journal what we are doing about inflation and it is a lot of shopping at the most affordable stores (food basics, health food store or bulk barn for gaps, and then the afghani butcher).
But after making the meal plan a few days ago and driving out to get groceries today, the toddler started projectile vomiting in the van. So instead I did a walmart order for the pantry stuff and went lean on produce because their produce sucks. Luckily I was buying a lot frozen this week anyway. G will go to the butcher and hopefully get produce there if it looks good. I did dhal and rice today because there was no energy available for yummy food.
Time to put the car seat covers on for a second round of laundry and hope that it all works out. L is coughing heavily, asthmatically and has had his puffers already.
Breakfasts
DUDE, it was going to be over $30 to get a digital copy of my kid’s school picture! F that!
Did they not have an a la carte option? I was able to get two 5x7’s for ~$20, one for us and one for the grandparents. My brother can digitize our copy and we can send that out to the rest of the fam.
). More a la carte options - two 5x7s is $20 and then four 3x5s is $20.